Trump ignorance - ‘That’s the one thing we did’: New Zealand irked by Trump’s false claim US split the atom
Trump, liar. Fake law and order pisspresident. Trump pardons almost all involved in Jan. 6 riot, commutes remaining 14 sentences
Mayor says he will invite incoming US ambassador to visit the memorial to Sir Ernest Rutherford, the New Zealander who split the atom in a British laboratory
Eva Corlett in Wellington Tue 21 Jan 2025 11.51 AEDT
A plaque at the Rutherford Building, at the University of Manchester. Donald Trump irked New Zealanders by claiming at his inauguration that US scientists split the atom. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
New Zealanders are not typically ones for splitting hairs, but when it comes to who split the atom, you had better have your facts straight – particularly if you have just been sworn in as the 47th US president.
During his inaugural address on Monday, Donald Trump reeled off a list of US achievements, including a claim that its experts split the atom.
However, that honour belongs to revered physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford .. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/may/12/the-10-best-physicists , a New Zealander who managed the historic feat in 1917 at Victoria University of Manchester in England. The element rutherfordium was named after him in 1997.
Nick Smith, the mayor of the city of Nelson near where Rutherford grew up, said he would invite the US ambassador to New Zealand – once Trump has appointed one – to “visit the Lord Rutherford memorial in Brightwater so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate”.
“I was a bit surprised by new president Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans split the atom when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford,” Smith said.
Ben Uffindell, the editor of satirical news site The Civilian, was similarly incredulous. “Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom. That’s THE ONE THING WE DID,” Uffindell posted.
Ernest Rutherford, right, with colleague Haus Geiger in their laboratory in Manchester in around 1908. Photograph: Rex Features
Trump, who is no stranger to using inflammatory language, sparked ire in New Zealand after telling an inauguration crowd: “Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness, they crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the wild west, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.”
It is not the first time Trump has erroneously claimed the US split the atom, nor the first time it has drawn ire from New Zealanders.
In a strikingly similar speech, given at Mount Rushmore .. https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/trump-tries-give-us-credit-splitting-atom .. in 2020, Trump said: “Americans harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the internet. We settled the wild west, won two world wars, landed American astronauts on the moon – and one day soon, we will plant our flag on Mars!”
[How stupidly uncaring and irresponsible is a guy who commits that mistake twice over a period of five years. He doesn't give a fuck. That's the only believable explanation. And it also reflects gross incompetence on whomever supervised Trump's speech. Seriously.]
Rutherford, who is sometimes referred to as the father of nuclear physics, discovered the idea of radioactive half-life and showed that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another. He was awarded a Nobel prize for chemistry in 1908 “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements”.
Rutherford later became director of the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge University where, under his leadership, the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and the first experiment to split the nucleus was carried out by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton.
With the stroke of a pen on his first day back in the White House, Trump’s order upended the largest prosecution in Justice Department history, freeing from prison people caught on camera viciously attacking police as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after his 2020 election loss.
More than 200 people convicted of Jan. 6 crimes were released from federal Bureau of Prisons custody by Tuesday morning, officials told The Associated Press.
The pardons and commutations cement Trump’s efforts to downplay the violence that left more than 100 police officers injured as the mob fueled by his lies about the 2020 election stormed the Capitol and halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump’s decision to grant clemency to even rioters who assaulted police — whom his own vice president recently said “obviously” shouldn’t be pardoned — underscores how Trump has returned to power emboldened to take actions once believed politically unthinkable. And it shows how Trump plans to radically overhaul the Justice Department that also brought criminal charges against him in two cases he contends were politically motivated.
“The implications are clear,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. “Trump will go to great lengths to protect those who act in his name. This is the culmination of his effort to rewrite Jan 6, in this case using his presidential muscle to free those who were part of a violent assault on the Capitol.”
As defendants celebrated their release outside lockups across the country, the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington that spent the last four years charging rioters filed a flurry of motions to dismiss cases that have yet to go to trial. The motions were marked with the name of the man Trump has named to lead, at least temporarily, the capital’s U.S. attorney’s office — Ed Martin, a board member of a group called the Patriot Freedom Project, which portrays the Jan. 6 defendants as victims of political persecution.
The former leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the most serious charges brought by the Justice Department, were both released from prison hours after Trump signed the clemency order. Stewart Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, was serving an 18-year prison sentence, and Enrique Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence.
About 100 people gathered in frigid temperatures outside the District of Columbia jail, where a handful of Jan. 6 defendants remained behind bars as of Tuesday morning.
Among those in the crowd was Robert Morss, a former Army Ranger and high school history teacher who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for his attacks on police at the Capitol. Morss was released late Monday from a halfway house in Pittsburgh and drove through the night to support defendants jailed in Washington.
Another Jan. 6 defendant, Kevin Loftus, traveled to the jail in Washington after his release from another lockup. Loftus was sentenced in December to six months behind bars for violating the terms of his probation after trying to fly overseas to join the Russian military and fight against Ukraine. He said he was going to have the pardon from Trump framed.
“I’m just a working man, dude. People like us don’t get presidential pardons,” Loftus said.
John Pierce, an attorney who has represented several Jan. 6 defendants, said he was “pleasantly surprised” that Trump’s pardons went as far as they did, considering Vance’s recent comments that suggested only nonviolent offenders would receive relief. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, also indicated that she did not believe violent rioters should be pardoned, telling lawmakers at her confirmation hearing that she condemned violence against police.
“He did not have to do this. He had a lot of opposition within his own party,” Pierce said. “I do think it showed a lot of courage by President Trump to pardon everybody, so we are obviously grateful for that.” Pierce said clemency for all the defendants was justified because, he contends, they couldn’t get a fair trial in the nation’s heavily Democratic capital.
The federal courthouse in Washington, which has been jammed with Jan. 6 cases over the last four years, was quiet Tuesday as proceedings were abruptly canceled. Hallways that would have been teeming with prospective jurors were empty. Judges who would have been hearing cases were not on the bench.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly made a brief appearance in her sixth-floor courtroom to formally dismiss a Jan. 6 case against a father and son from Minnesota whose trial started last week. The court had notified jurors that they didn’t need to return this week.
“The parties are excused,” the judge said, without commenting on Trump’s clemency order.
The son, 22-year-old Caleb Fuller, hugged his attorney and then his mother, Amanda, who wore a sequined jacket with an American flag on the front and the words “Proud American” emblazoned on the back.
Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.
One man was sentenced to seven years in prison for trying to smash a widow with a metal tomahawk and hurling makeshift weapons at police officers guarding the building. Another man received 20 years behind bars for swinging poles at officers defending a tunnel, striking an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacking police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture.
A Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through the broken window of a barricaded Capitol doorway. Authorities cleared the officer of any wrongdoing after an investigation. Three other people in the crowd died of medical emergencies.
At least four officers who were at the Capitol later died by suicide. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes. _
Associated Press journalists Chris Megerian and Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.
Alongside revoking 78 Biden executive orders, a busy first day for the Trump administration produced a government hiring freeze, withdrawals from global organizations, personnel changes and more. (lucky-photographer/GettyImages)
President Donald Trump made good on his campaign promises to kick off his second term in office with a tidal wave of executive orders.
Either in front of cheering supporters at a Monday evening rally or later that night in the Oval Office, Trump signed dozens of executive orders and outlined other presidential actions spanning large swaths of the federal government. This included an executive order revoking 78 executive actions .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/initial-rescissions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions/ .. taken by the Biden administration, plus other steps to review rulemaking and other actions taken during the waning days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Additional orders signed by Trump outline ideological changes to how executive agencies will craft regulations and view artificial intelligence or reassess the U.S.’ role in global agreements. Other changes weren’t explicitly laid out in the president’s orders but are reflected in materials no longer available on government websites.
Here’s a breakdown of the changes affecting healthcare agencies, the industry and public health. (Editor’s note: this story is being updated.)
Regulatory freeze slows HHS
The Trump administration has ordered a government wide regulatory freeze that will halt progress on healthcare regulations.
The freeze stops the rule making process in its tracks and prevents the new Trump administration from issuing new rules for 60 days.
In that time, the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership will decide which Biden-era regulations it wants to toss, which it will let stand and which it wants to change.
The first Trump administration and the Biden administration instated regulatory freezes on the first days of their terms in 2017 and 2021, respectively.
“The administration gets in and understands the regulatory landscape of where things are and can put out their own kind of stamp on regulatory policies,” Jeff Davis, director of health policy at McDermott+, said.
The freeze will give the Trump administration time to determine its regulatory priorities and how they differ from Biden’s. Also, the 60-day freeze gives the administration time to get through the confirmation process for agency officials.
Of note, Trump’s nominee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has not yet been scheduled to appear in front of the Senate. The Washington Post reported that the scheduling of the confirmation hearing has been delayed because the Senate is still rifling through RFK Jr.’s financial disclosures. Dorothy Fink, M.D., has been appointed to serve as acting HHS secretary in the meantime.
Davis said it’s likely that the Trump team will throw out Biden’s proposed staffing mandate for skilled nursing facilities and the proposed updates to Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug programs.
In the last weeks of Biden’s term, his administration proposed several rules, even though the administration knew they could not be finalized and would likely be subject to a regulatory freeze.
“They're not starting from scratch, so to speak,” Davis said. “They have to kind of deal with some of the proposed rules … and put their own spin on them or rescind them. But they have to deal with them in some capacity.”
The Trump administration has several other tools at its disposal to void Biden-era healthcare regulations. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to more easily invalidate regulations finalized after May 22, 2024. The new administration could also promulgate new rulemaking that replaces a Biden regulation and prevents the agency from proposing a similar rule.
The new administration could also choose to not enforce Biden-era rules or could challenge rules in court. One of the many Biden executive orders that Trump rescinded on day one was his 2023 order to modernize the regulatory review process.
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